Giorgia Meloni

2022 - 9 - 23

Post cover — Image courtesy of "POLITICO.eu"

The mainstreaming of Giorgia Meloni (POLITICO.eu)

Meloni and her “post-fascist” Brothers of Italy are the main cause behind the weakening of both Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini's The League ...

But some Italian media — and her domestic opponents — have questioned her sincerity, especially as she’s emphasized the need to support Ukraine for the sake of “ [international credibility](https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/politica/2022/09/04/meloni-sanzioni-non-ci-sfiliamo.-salvini-i-danni-li-paghi-lue-_338a545f-26b9-4bdd-9489-da66bb3a556d.html).” [lean toward Forza Italia](https://formiche.net/2022/04/meloni-dc-ipsos-de-gasperi-sondaggio-fdi/), and seeking more support from this electorate, Crosetto has taken to speaking of Meloni forming a “government of all the talents” on the center-right. And alongside the soft-pedaling of her While desperate to reassert himself as a national leader, many in his party fault his leadership for the erosion of support for The League. Widely seen as the more disruptive force, he may well be tempted to use sanctions to harass Meloni after the election, seeking to undermine her authority. The most prominent defector to Meloni’s camp, however, is Giulio Tremonti, former finance minister in most of Berlusconi’s governments. The party has been eating into the electoral support of its allies, rising from 4 percent in the polls in 2018 to around 25 percent in the last surveys before the election. The Italian media has reported he’s planning a visit to the Crosetto, one of the party’s few co-founders who isn’t from a neo-fascist background, has been more useful for Meloni. Meloni and her “post-fascist” Brothers of Italy are the main cause behind the weakening of both Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s The League. But Meloni owes much to the more moderate forces in what Italians call the “center-right” alliance. They’ve allowed her the opportunity to present herself as part of the mainstream, not just because she’s been softening her policies — at least in presentation — but also because center-right politicians jumping on her bandwagon have given her a veneer of respectability and credibility.

Giorgia Meloni Makes Markets Anxious, But Italians Want Her in ... (Bloomberg)

The far-right leader has a commanding lead in polling ahead of Sunday's election, but no one is really sure what she'll do under pressure to tackle the ...

Italy elections: Far-right leader Meloni tells Italians 'don't be afraid' (BBC News)

The frontrunner in Italy's election believes the way to success is through voters' pockets.

According to the director of the institute for foreign affairs in Rome, Nathalie Tocci, Ms Meloni is no populist either. But Stefano Stefanini, Italy's former ambassador to Nato, told me that where foreign policy was concerned, Italy had been consistent for the past 70 years. Caterina Cerroni, 31, is the youngest candidate standing in this election for the left-wing Democratic Party. Last election her party got 4% of the vote, now she's angling for her country's premiership. Unless the new government formed after this election acted fast to help businesses, he said, his factory could face closure within months. She bellowed her economic promises at the nodding, cheering crowd. "Unlike the UK, our government hasn't lent us enough of a helping hand. Both men have historically close ties to Russia. Because they haven't yet sat in government to disappoint us." They have even gone skiing together. That's why, unfortunately, people are looking to the [political] right. "Italians feel abandoned.

Is Fascism Returning to Italian Politics? (The Atlantic)

Next week, Italy will have a new prime minister—and the leading candidate, Giorgia Meloni, is an avowed fan of Mussolini.

But the Brothers of Italy’s advocacy of “presidentialism,” as the idea of a more robust head of state with a popular mandate is known in Italy, has naturally put the country’s center-left parties on edge. Women like Meloni “are protected by patriarchy,” she said, “because they are often the first to support the fundamental pillars of male power and privilege.” Meloni’s party slogan—“God, Fatherland, Family”—celebrates those very pillars of power. A scenario in which a Meloni-led government’s rollback of civil rights might put Italy on a path to conflict with the European Union is not far-fetched. In particular, the natalist obsession of Il Duce’s 20-year rule, with its “Battle for Births,” has survived in the Brothers of Italy’s present-day concern about boosting the birth rate, its proposal to link social-welfare assistance to mothers and those engaged in child care, and its attempts to [limit](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/22/abortion-rights-at-risk-in-region-led-by-party-of-italys-possible-next-pm) reproductive rights. [called](https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/politica/2017/02/18/migranti-salvini-pulizia-di-massa_38d0c829-7431-4ddb-8b06-da1fb7f7ff62.html) for a “mass cleansing” of immigrants. Berlusconi’s short-lived center-right government of 1994 also included the Northern League (the original name of Salvini’s party) and brought the MSI’s neofascists into a governing coalition for the first time in Europe since 1945. [fascism is a](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/11/scepticism-over-giorgia-melonis-claims-fascism-is-history-in-italian-far-right)fascism is a [“LGBT lobbies”](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62659183) that are out to harm women and the family by destroying “gender identity”; George Soros, an [international speculator](https://twitter.com/broderly/status/1552247114507378690/photo/1),” she has said, who finances global [“mass immigration”](https://twitter.com/broderly/status/1552247082681081863/photo/1) that threatens a Great Replacement of white, native-born Italians. [genderwashing](https://muse.jhu.edu/article/852745/pdf?casa_token=QS6FmS0-i9cAAAAA:SSPLUTOXDR9oP0jyLQFdAyGNn7-wXc6qZtNwgDRxVNC8PboUWNMs2i6-4_BxAlf2wnJ4hjS8x_XO),” when female politicians adopt a nonthreatening image to blunt the force of their extremism. [“](https://twitter.com/broderly/status/1552247114507378690/photo/1)“ Now, just weeks before the 100th anniversary of the March on Rome—the October 1922 event that put Mussolini in power—Italy may have a former MSI activist for its prime minister and a government rooted in fascism. [said](https://jacobin.com/2022/09/hillary-clinton-women-far-right-italy-giorgia-meloni-feminism) to an Italian journalist at the Venice International Film Festival earlier this month.

Giorgia Meloni: The Woman Of Europe's Future - The American ... (The American Conservative)

The Italian national conservative is Europe's hope vs. the technocratic tyranny of Ursula von der Leyen.

This is part of the reason why National Conservatism is the new conservative mainstream, and why Yoram Hazony's great work is paying off. She defends the idea of national sovereignty, of the traditional family, and of Europe's Christian heritage. Seriously, please watch it, and keep it in mind when you read or hear the media characterizing her as a far-right lunatic.

The making and meaning of Giorgia Meloni (New Statesman)

The post-fascist Brothers of Italy are rising fast, led by Giorgia Meloni whom many expect to be Italy's first female prime minister.

“She knows that she has only one shot at her major ambition,” says Teresa Coratella of the European Council on Foreign Relations, “to become the leader of a new kind of conservatism in Europe.” Then in August that year he abruptly ended his party’s short-lived coalition with the M5S, but failed to found a new government of his own. Salvini spent much of the summer of 2019 on a hubristic tour of the country’s beach clubs, swilling mojitos and dancing with women in bikinis. Traits epitomised by the rise and rise of Giorgia Meloni. Postwar Italian politics reverted to the old caution, a republic defined by the stability of mass-movement political parties – primarily the Christian Democrats and the Communists – deeply rooted in civic life and, alongside them, a dense web of patronage, political appointments and state bureaucracy. Now I do so in the halls of parliament; then it was in the streets of Rome with the first initiatives, the first demonstrations, the first leafleting at the schools.” Her refrain “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am a Christian” has become so recognisable in Italian politics that it has inspired an array of raps and other musical parodies. Italy has a deep history of instinctive small-c conservatism, often ascribed to its long centuries of foreign dominance (the French philosopher Guy Debord memorably called the country a “laboratory for international counter-revolution”). In an Italian political scene dominated by posturing macho men from the country’s northern economic heartlands (Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini from Lombardy, Matteo Renzi from Tuscany, Beppe Grillo from Liguria), she is a woman who speaks “romanaccio” (a derogatory term for the Roman accent) and who grew up in the working-class Garbatella district of the Italian capital. “Thus in that summer of 1992 I began the battle that I continue fighting today. But she has made a virtue of her roots, embracing them by developing the persona of “Giorgia” – a brassy, sardonic and confident product of Garbatella who pulled herself up in the world. The cheers mount as she becomes more severe, her voice harsher, lambasting the “hatred” of left-wing leaders for daring to criticise her in the international media.